Dublin Doodle

St. Patrick’s Day: the one day of the year when the eyes of the world are on Ireland. Or, more likely, it’s the time when most people dress up in wigs and hats to be Irish for a day. So when Tourism Ireland asked us to get the public involved in ‘Global Greening’—a St Patrick’s Day phenomenon when over 70 major landmarks around the world turn bright green for the day—we decided to do something creative and bring people around the world closer to Ireland.

Our brief was simple: turn the focus of St. Patrick’s Day into real engagement and measurable returns. Luckily for us, even though Ireland’s a small country competing in a crowded tourism market, Tourism Ireland has long believed in the power of social media. With the second largest Facebook presence for a tourist board, it made sense to harness the power of Facebook for our campaign.

Our Global Greening campaign was entitled ‘The Dublin Doodle’. We created a neat little Facebook app that invited people to draw a doodle on a virtual representation of Trinity College, Dublin. All you needed to do was use your imagination, get drawing, and share your doodles with your friends.

The added incentive was that 50 of the best doodles were projected as huge digital animations onto Trinity College as the official start of the Dublin St. Patrick’s Festival 2013. To capture this memorable show, we set up a live stream so our doodlers could tune in from around the world and see their creations turn Trinity College green as part of the Dublin festivities. The campaign was delivered in local languages to people on Facebook in key markets: UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Italy, Canada, South Africa and Australia.